Kriti Mehrotra
It was October 15, 2009, when everything turned upside down for the Heene family as one of their experiments became national news, which then resulted in criminal charges against the parents. As profiled in Netflix’s ‘Trainwreck: Balloon Boy,’ it was not long after their homemade flying saucer lifted off that they reported their youngest son missing, only for him to turn up at home hours later. A statement 6-year-old Falcon later made on television raised some suspicions, and this entire ordeal was soon deemed a hoax, with his parents, Mayumi and Richard Heene, also being criminally charged.
Mayumi and Richard Heene Were Admittedly Struggling in 2009
It was in 1997 when Richard Heene first came across Mayumi at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in Los Angeles, California, only to immediately be attracted to her. According to his accounts, she was holding a clipboard and seemed like she could be the perfect counterbalance for his disorganized yet innovative mind. Little did he know he would turn out to be right. She saw that while he just had a high school diploma and work experience that comprised cutting demo reels for actors and working on homes as a contractor, he had a brilliant and innovative mind that she loved to support.
Therefore, Mayumi and Richard tied the knot in a cozy ceremony on October 12, 1997, following which they settled down in Fort Collins, Colorado, where they welcomed three sons into their lives. They were honestly happy, especially considering that while the former had managed to establish an at-home video-editing business, the latter was now a licensed contractor. As if that’s not enough, he was even pursuing his passion for chasing storms and studying electromagnetic fields. In fact, in 2008, the same year the family appeared on ‘Wife Swap,’ he co-wrote a paper on electromagnetic fields, which appeared in the National Weather Digest.
Little did Mayumi and Richard know that the recession would soon strike, leaving them both with little work but their entire family to feed. That’s when they pitched their idea of having their own reality show, primarily since they were known to conduct various science experiments at home, with Richard never shying away from exploring the bounds of his knowledge. In April 2009, the family even signed an option with producers of ‘Wife Swap’ to pitch a series about outrageous homemade science experiments and the equally outrageous family that created them, but it never got picked up. Then came the infamous Balloon Boy incident.
Mayumi and Richard Heene Were Granted a Pardon in 2020
Although Mayumi and Richard planned to launch their homemade flying saucer on their 12th wedding anniversary after working on it for a month, the weather didn’t permit them to. Their plan was to have it float around 30 feet in the air, but when they eventually did fill it up with helium on October 15, 2009, the tether reportedly “snapped,” taking it up in the air. It wasn’t long after that their eldest son, Bradford, told them Falcon was inside, and 30-45 minutes later, they had contacted the Federal Aviation Administration, the police, and a Denver news station in the hopes of getting eyes on the balloon, which they did within the hours.
The balloon came down nearly 90 minutes after the initial 911 call in a field about 50 miles from the Heenes’ home, but Falcon was not inside. He showed up at home a short while later, revealing he was in the garage’s attic, where he had fallen asleep, seemingly bringing matters to a close. However, things changed that evening when he said on ‘The Larry King Show,’ “You guys said…[pause] that, um…[pause] we did this for the show.” This gave way to suspicion that this entire ordeal was a hoax. Within days, the parents had been taken into custody, questioned, and asked to submit to different polygraph tests, with Mayumi crumbling.
Eventually, Mayumi and Richard were criminally charged, and on November 13, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant. As for Mayumi, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false reporting to authorities. While he was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 30 of which would be a proper sentence, whereas the remaining 60 would be under “work release,” she was handed down 20 days of weekend jail so as to be still able to care for her young kids. The couple was also ordered to pay $36,000 in restitution. During their sentencing, they both sincerely apologized for what had transpired.
However, before Richard was to begin his sentence on January 11, 2010, he gave several interviews, during which he maintained that he and his wife were coerced to confess and plead. He even went as far as to allege that when they indicated they would take the matter to trial, his wife was threatened with deportation to her home country of Japan. This narrative is something they have maintained even after their release and in the years since, and in December 2020, Colorado Governor Jared Polis pardoned both of them. In other words, their records were scrubbed clean, and it enabled Richard to pursue a contractor’s license again.
Mayumi and Richard Heene Are Seemingly Leading Quiet Yet Happy Lives Today
Even though Mayumi and Richard were given 8 years of probation as a part of their sentence, they were still allowed to relocate after their prison term concluded for good. Therefore, in August 2010, Richard moved his family to Florida, where they initially resided in Bradenton before moving further north in the state so as to start anew. From what we can tell, that’s precisely what they did, even going as far as to homeschool all 3 of their sons so as to help them avoid any possible negative attention they might face. The couple didn’t want their family’s past to affect their sons’ future, and it appears as if they succeeded because neither of them is held down by it.
Richard felt hurt because becoming a felon meant he could no longer pursue his lifelong dream of going on ‘Shark Tank,’ which is the holy grail of reality television for inventors. As if that’s not enough, per his own accounts, because a simple search of his name revealed him to be a convicted felon, he reportedly also lost a lot of friends and potential clients. Nevertheless, he managed to work his way up to being a contractor again, relying on his craft, skills, and word of mouth to grow while his traditional wife took on the role of the family caretaker and glue. They honestly appear perfectly content on their homestead around Gainesville, Florida.
Since the pardon, though, Mayumi and Richard have been over the moon, especially because a lot of doors have opened for them. While he can go on ‘Shark Tank,’ she has since been able to become an official US Citizen, and they can now also make money on the infamous incident if they so want. After all, a part of their sentencing was that they were not allowed to financially benefit from the incident while serving time or probation. Despite the fact that he is now in their 60s, Richard remains rather youthful thanks to his blue-collar work and his determination to continue experimenting and inventing. He is the brains behind the Bear Scratch back scratcher, HeeneDuty Truck Transformers, Head Banger Energy Shots, and much more.
